“Umbrella with Legs”

35mm – Neopan 1600, converted to digital negative, Cyanotype print on Arches Cover. Natural north window light.
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When I was home, in CK for Thanksgiving, I went through some of my print files and came across this small Cyanotype – it’s about 3×5 inches, on Arches Cover, mounted on mat board with a reverse bevel. This reminded me that I was actually getting to be pretty good making digital negatives and then contact printing them as Cyanotypes, and that was with the old Epson Stylus C64 printer. So now, that I have all my supplies gathered again, the Arista OHP arrived while I was gone, I am determined to get back to making good Cyanotype prints. Much to my sorrow I discovered that Printing Out Paper [POP] seems to be no longer available, it was one of the printing techniques that I wanted to take up again too.

Of Rainer Maria Rilke, David Byrne, terrifying angles, bicycles & some of my photos.

I have posted this previously, but just reworked it, and I like this better than previous prints. The photo belongs to my, “Every Angel is Terrifying” portfolio.
The portfolio title is a line from Rilke’s ‘Duino Elegies’ which I translated as follows:

“Who, if I screamed, would hear me among the angels?
and even if one of them would press me suddenly against her breast:
I would be annihilated by her overwhelming splendor.
For beauty is nothing but the beginning of the horrific,
which we are only able to bear in passing,
as it threatens to obliterate us. Each and every angel is terrifying.”
www.amazon.com/Duino-Elegies-Rainer-Maria-Rilke/dp/086547…

I just read David Byrne’s new book, “Bicycle Diaries” – which is fantastic. And in a brief paragraph he talks about Rilke. This quote is actually from his blog, I could not find the book quote, since I had to take the book back to the library this morning.
www.amazon.com/Bicycle-Diaries-David-Byrne/dp/0670021148/…

Anyhow, he says, “Matthias [a German artist with whom he was having a conversation] said beauty – being ephemeral, evanescent and impermanent – reminds us of death. I would have never put an equal sign between the two myself – seems overly Romantic a la Rilke again, but I see his point. The morbidity of beauty. Huh.”
http://journal.davidbyrne.com/

Cyanotype – getting closer

Messing around with trying to get a good digital negative for my Cyanotype prints, I used Dan Burkholder’s Photoshop Layer Template [the old version, he has a newer one for sale on his web site], and made a digital contact sheet, using four different negatives.  The one that looked the best was produced using the layer circled above in the screen shot.

So, now I just need to get some more Pictoria OHP and see how that will work, since they apparently changed the specs of the stuff since I last bought it.

Cyanotypes & Digital negatives

[the color is a little off in this, its not quite as purple]

I have been working on and off with digital negatives for quite some time now, making contact prints on enlarging paper and Cyanotype and Van Dyke Brown prints on Arches paper.  However, I have not pursued this consistently enough to really get good at it.  When we moved up here, it seriously disrupted my working in the darkroom. Almost a year ago I did a couple of Cyanotype prints and wrote about it on this blog.

For a whole lot of reasons it wasn’t till today that I did another print.  Three days ago I coated some Arches Cover paper with Cyanotype and put it in a cardboard box to dry.  The next day, when I wanted to print there was no sun, and the day after, I could not find my contact printing frame.  So, finally today Alexandria found the printing frame for me, and the sun was out.  However, by now, the coating on the paper had deteriorated somewhat, plus I had not been precise enough in applying the emulsion, so the prints left a lot to be desired.

I did a test print, and a couple of full prints.  I know from experience that sun exposure for my prints is about 3 to 4 minutes in the full sun, and they came out ok, but since I keep insisting on using cold pressed paper, the surface is a bit rough.  Which I really like at times, but it does not work too well for this image.

[exposing the image in the sun]

[washing in the kitchen sink]

[digital negatives and prints]

Rodney Smith

If there is one photographer whom I have admired and tried to emulate over the years, it is Rodney Smith.  I never knew much about him except that when I ran across photos in magazines that really resonated with me, it more often then not turned out to be an image by Smith.  When I read about his working methods which apparently involved arriving on the set by himself with one camera, no lights and a bunch of film stuck in his pockets, I was totally smitten.

To my great delight I ran across his blog yesterday.  I had no idea that he was maintaining  one.  It is titled “The End Starts Here.” Like his photographs, it is extremely elegant, witty, honest, and to me totally fascinating.  It blows my mind that there are hardly any comments on his posts, indicating that the number of comments does not equate to anything, certainly does not reflect the quality of the work.